Having time off from school is usually amazing! But this year we’ve missed out on so much, we’re thirsty for new opportunities to meet new people, try new things, and celebrate who we are as young women. How about you? For the second year, The Shona Project is offering the girls of Waterford an inspirational
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Do you have a flair for art and design? Do you love celebrating amazing women? Well, we have the perfect competition for you! Our amazing friends at The Wonderkind, are launching a new range of beautiful badges, each featuring an inspiring female designed by one of you! Between now and May 28th, you can express
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Here at SHONA, we believe in the power of storytelling, of sharing our experiences to empower ourselves and those around us. We know you have all struggled over the past year, to be honest, we have too. COVID has caused nothing but chaos since it reared its ugly head. You may have felt isolated, overwhelmed,
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Hold on to your hats people!! Are you ready for our BIGGEST EVER ANNOUNCEMENT!!! Shona fans will know that we love nothing more than to put on a big event! For us, it doesn’t get much better than bringing as many girls and as many inspiring women into one room as we possibly can!
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We are SO excited to finally share our latest news. Are you ready! For the past few months we’ve been working on the cutest little book called “The Survival Handbook for Girls”. This book is has been lovingly put together by our entire team and beautifully illustrated by our friends at Vitamin Creative. The book
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Hi everyone! My name is Julie (she/her/hers) and I’d like to talk to you about something really cool. It’s about emotions and cutlery. I know, sounds random, but bear with me. You might not think cutlery can become the basis of a life-changing way to view your emotions, but, surprise, it can! And not
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Women are fiery, strong, compassionate, resilient and beautiful creatures. And yet we live in a world that doesn’t celebrate these things as much as it should. Media celebrates a very narrow definition of beauty, one that doesn’t last because time passes, and we grow up and grow old. Gravity hits and traumas, scars and stretch
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Our SHINE Festival in March 2021 was a roaring success, smashing all of our targets with 40,000 girls attending. Over 80 incredible, authentic and badass women joined us to celebrate being a girl for 3 whole days! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be catching up with some of the speakers to share why we
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The last 14 months have left most people feeling overwhelmed and slightly jaded. If you have spent a lot of time worrying about the future that is okay. So much change has happened over the last year. The good news is you don’t have to have all the answers. You can look back on this
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Our SHINE Festival in March 2021 was a roaring success, smashing all of our targets with 40,000 girls attending. Over 80 incredible, authentic and badass women joined us to celebrate being a girl for 3 whole days! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be catching up with some of the speakers to share why we
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I am not being overdramatic when I say that doing a Post-Leaving Cert Course (PLC) was the best decision I’ve ever made for myself. Seriously. Last September, I enrolled in a Level 5 course in Art, Craft, and Design, and it gave me so much freedom to learn and grow, not only as an artist
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Every week, we tell you about some of the amazing ladies we have the honour of sharing this planet with. This week, we thought, what about all of the ladies that we look up to, that aren’t real?! For this week’s Shona Heroes, we’re highlighting some impressive leading ladies from animated shows. **Spoilers will be
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Whether you know her for wearing a red jersey for Cork, as a coach on Ireland’s Fittest Family or bopping her way across the dance floor on Dancing With the Stars, over the last few years, Anna Geary has become a name we all know and love. Just like us here at SHONA, Anna aims
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Do you ever find yourself in a funk or a mood and have no idea how to get out of it? Well, we have asked our Shona Ambassador and health psychology expert Orna Murray to talk about how movement can unlock way more energy and help you to feel more positive and open. Body &
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Our mission at Shona, which we do accept, is to inspire and empower girls. So for this week, our chosen hero is Dench. Dame Judi Dench. Actress, philanthropist, advocate, it’s hard to choose what we like most about Dame Judi. Luckily, we don’t have to. With experience on both the theatre stage and the silver
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Hey, welcome back. In our last post, we talked about confidence (you can check it out HERE). As confidence usually involves taking a bit of a risk, which can sound dangerous and scary, we want to chat about it a little more. When you look up the word “Risk” in the dictionary, it usually mentions
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How many times have you been told you should “have more confidence in yourself?” It’s not exactly helpful, as confidence doesn’t grow on trees and isn’t given out as a freebie with a Happy Meal. To be honest, most of us don’t even know what it really even means. Well, here we are, your friends at
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Learning to Love Unlike many people’s coming out stories, I never really ‘came out’, instead I see it as a process of accepting myself and my sexuality. I grew up Catholic like many others in Ireland, attending mass on Sundays and going to a Catholic primary and secondary school. We never learned about same-sex couples
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Hi, y’all! My name is Julie (she/her/hers) and I’m an intern here at SHONA. Today, I’m going to share my story. I was around 14 when I first began questioning my sexuality. Maybe this story sounds familiar: I’d grown up in a community that assumed people were straight and treated anyone different as weird at
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If you’ve ever watched “Orange Is The New Black” you will, of course, recognise Laverne Cox, who played the sassy but vulnerable Sophia Burset. Whilst OITNB gave Laverne her big break, we now know and love her as a huge advocate and inspiration for trans folks. Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Laverne was a
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I have never struggled with a piece of writing more than this one. I have opened and closed this word document what feels like 100 times in the last few weeks, trying to find the right words. The document is saved as “pride month”, and I think the reason that I am struggling to
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We’re generally not into labels because everyone is different and unique. We shouldn’t need to find a box that we fit neatly inside so that everyone knows and understands us. As a society we’re changing rapidly, trying to find new ways to respect and protect each other. And that’s a good thing. When it comes
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In a weird way, I was lucky to have had a little bit of a different leaving cert experience than most others have. I say “in a weird way” because it wasn’t exactly lucky that I was depressed during my leaving cert. However, it did allow me to have a very different perspective on the
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